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FEARLESS ADVOCATES

This year, we again burnished our reputation as one of the most bold, courageous, and effective advocacy organizations in America.

In 2013 and 2014, the SNAP program was deeply cut, and we helped lead the national campaign opposing the cuts. While we didn’t prevent the cuts, they would have been far deeper without our work.

We spoke out in the national news media, organized those directly impacted by the cuts, met with elected officials, held public events to raise awareness, and brought together our colleagues from across the nation in an effort to keep millions of Americans from losing the benefits they rely on to feed their families.

New York City Coalition Against Hunger

Advocacy Track Record:

Tough Fights and Big Wins

Over the last five years, NYCCAH has led efforts to highlight New York City’s under-participation in the School Breakfast Program and called for universal, in-classrooms breakfast to fix the problem. In 2015, NYCCAH convinced Mayor de Blasio and the City Council to allocate nearly $18 million in City funding to ensure universal free breakfasts in classrooms in 530 elementary schools, serving 339,000 students, by fall of 2017, thereby leveraging tens of millions of dollars of extra federal breakfast reimbursements.

In January 2002, a total of 798,396 New York City residents received food stamp (now called SNAP) benefits, receiving a collective total of $82.64 million in benefits, equaling $991.78 million in benefit dollars for the year. At that time, NYCCAH determined that more than a million low-income New Yorkers were eligible, but not then receiving, food stamps, and launched a comprehensive advocacy, media, and outreach effort to increase participation. By January of 2013, participation had increased to 1,642,854 people (an 844,458 person jump) and monthly benefits increased to $288.94 million (a 273% increase), equaling $3.47 billion in benefits per year going to low-income families to help them prevent hunger. Thus, the increase alone amounted to about $2.47 billion extra in food dollars each year. There were many factors responsible for this hike, with the largest factor being the deep and long recession. But if we make a conservative estimate that NYCCAH’s SNAP media, outreach, and advocacy efforts were responsible for at least 10% of the caseload increase, that means at least 84,000 people received extra food benefits, worth $247 million per year, due to NYCCAH’s work. While the annual amount of NYCCAH internal spending on SNAP advocacy, media, and outreach grew greatly over that 11-year period, on average NYCCAH spent roughly $300,000 per year on those functions over that time period. That means that $300,000 in NYCCAH spending aided 84,000 people and generated $247 million in benefits, meaning every three and a half dollars spent by NYCCAH helped one person get SNAP for a year and every one dollar spent by NYCCAH generated $823 worth of benefits.

In 2014, NYCCAH played a key role in New York City’s decision to accept the federal waiver that allows people who are unemployed to continue to get SNAP benefits as they look for work.

In 2014 and 2015, the Coalition played a high level role in the national media to help successfully block conservatives in Congress from rolling-back improved school nutrition standards.

In 2014 and 2015, NYCCAH played a significant role in convincing Governor Cuomo to take executive action to shield New York State SNAP recipients from federal cuts, ensuring that 300,000 low-income households kept $450 million worth of food benefits each of the two years.

NYCCAH played a key role over the last decade in increasing the use of SNAP benefits at New York City farmers’ markets, ensuring that most of the high-volume markets in the city now accept SNAP benefits.

In 2008, NYCCAH co-wrote a paper, which included our idea for the federal government to create a new grant program to reward states for innovative programs to reduce child hunger:http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/news.aspx?id=461f4e17-6307-474e-8c8f-f35c79954578. In 2010, Congress and the President agreed, as part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA), to create such a grant program. In 2015, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, announced the first grants under the program, awarding $27 million to Kentucky, Nevada, Virginia, the Chickasaw Nation, and theNavajo Nation.

NYCCAH spearheaded a successful effort to eliminate finger printing of SNAP applicants as of 2012,ending thecostly, punitive, and ineffective process.

The Coalition pioneered Food Action Boards, one of the few projects in the nation that places hungry Americans in the forefront of the fight against hunger.

Using NYCCAH’s existing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) sites as a model, the Coalition helped convince Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to push to increase aid to CSAs in the federal Farm Bill in 2013.

Over the last decade, NYCCAH has worked closely with labor unions and other advocacy groups to successfully push for state minimum wage increases, city living wage laws, and a state wage board to lift wages for fast food workers.